I'm going to be working from home in the near future.
I don't want to heat the whole house all day and am wondering the best way of keeping one room warm.

Our room thermostat is wireless and not fixed to a wall, I can pick it up and move it to another room if I want.

Now, normally you'd have your room thermostat in a room where the radiator has no thermostatic valve fitted.
But my "office" has a thermostatic rad valve.
If I turn off all the thermostatic valves in the house except the one in the office and then take the room stat (set at 19c) into the office and leave the office rad valve on maximum, will that achieve a nice cold house but a steady temperature of 19c in the office?

Sort of, your heating will be working and circulating hot water all around your house like normal, but the rad valves will just stop it from diverting into the "switched off" radiators so they will stay cold.

You need one of these



Nip down to Mallory's for a gallon of Esso Blue and job's a good 'un

Ah, that takes me back.
Esso Esso ... Esso Esso blue ... Esso, Esso ... Blue blue blue blue
They don't write them like that any more.

You're in the same situation as me then



What I normally do is leave the central heating off and use a 400/800w halogen heater to toast me'sin in my room with the closed door - electricity is cheaper than gas now and set to 400w the heater warms the room up pretty quickly, in fact I've never set it to 800w.

It depends on your heating system.
An old system needs at least one radiator working to dissipate the heat it generates. They used to recommend having at least one radiator that wasn't on a thermostatic valve. So if your office radiator isn't on permanently, you'll need to switch one other room on to ensure it doesn't blow steam out of the hot water tank - mine's actually done that a couple of times.
Newer systems, especially with a combi boiler might have designed that problem out though.

Sorry just read your post properly. Using the room thermostat with the radiator switched on full should do the trick.

You caught my eye with "electricity is cheaper than gas now".
It's a tiny room so I might follow your example.

Is it? Maybe that's why the occupants of Chez Aardvark are using as much of it as they can possibly manage, to take full advantage

I haven't actually checked but, if Mr Chicken says it's cheaper then it very probably is.

When I say its cheaper than gas I mean that we've always had a dual fuel tarriff and until recently the gas element was always lower than the electric - now without changing anything at all the electricity is cheaper than the gas, in fact we've built up a nice credit on the leccie bit.

I suppose that the electric useage is pretty constant through the year give or take a couple of lightbulbs being used for longer in the winter whereas the gas takes a massive hit during the winter.

Anyway, those halagon heaters give off a hell of a lot of heat for just 400w, I'd recommend one rather than have your boiler flogging its guts out all day long to heat the cupboard under the stairs that you call an office.

Well yes but it wasn't a question, just a lead in to a 'joke'. Anyway, I wouldn't use "cheaper", I'd use "not quite as extortionate

This'll do the trick as long as you have a bypass rad (no TRV) somewhere (probably hall or bathroom).

Electric room heaters are very costly to run.

I think his idea is that with the TRV turned up to five it will act as a non TRV type valve (they seem to to me) and his office radiator will act as the bypass rad.

Why didn't I see that?

Been a long day mate